A state monopoly on schooling leaves dissenting families nowhere to go

The argument

The second argument concerns what a ban would hand to the state. Proponents of this position argue that education is not a technical service but the formation of children, involving contested judgements about what is worth knowing, how history should be told, what counts as a virtue and how religion and sexuality should be treated. Where independent schools exist, a family that disagrees with the official answers has somewhere to go, and proponents argue that a ban removes that and makes the government the only provider of an answer every child must receive. Proponents argue this is a serious concentration of power regardless of who holds office. A single curriculum set by whichever party has won becomes the only account available, and the ordinary alternation of governments means it will periodically be rewritten by people the previous majority opposed. They add that the families most exposed would be religious minorities and others whose convictions diverge from the prevailing view, since these are the families least likely to see their position reflected in a national syllabus and most likely to be told that their objection is accommodated when it is not. They add that independent schools serve purposes a uniform system handles poorly. Proponents argue that specialist provision for particular talents, for pupils with needs the local school cannot meet, and for approaches to teaching that are experimental and unproven all require somewhere outside the standard model to exist, and that such variety is also where the state sector finds practices worth adopting. The argument concludes that abolishing private schools would eliminate pluralism in a domain where pluralism protects both dissenting families and the capacity of the system to learn, which is why it would be bad.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Critics answer that the pluralism defended here is available only to families who can pay for it, so what the argument protects is the freedom of the wealthy to dissent while everyone else accepts the state's answer. They add that a common curriculum can itself be made plural, through parental opt-outs, locally governed schools, specialist provision and legal protection for belief, none of which requires fee-charging. Critics also argue that allowing families to purchase an education that excludes what they object to has costs of its own, since a society whose children are educated separately according to their parents' convictions has fewer shared points of reference.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] That education involves contested judgements is agreed, and it is a reason for those judgements to be made accountably in public rather than purchased privately by whoever can afford to. [Rejecting P2] A common system can be made plural through parental opt-outs, locally governed schools, specialist provision and legal protection for belief, so a single official answer is not what abolition entails. [Rejecting P3] The protection described is available only to families who can pay, so what it secures is the freedom of the wealthy to dissent while everyone else accepts the state's answer. [Rejecting C] At most it follows that a reformed system must preserve variety and conscience, not that fee-charging schools are the way to do it.